Jesus and The Spectacle of Christmas

Understanding Jesus as the image of God who meets us where we are

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

Guy Debord

I rarely write about religion, faith, God, Christianity, or the church. The principal reason is that people prefer to debate the institutional and cultural forms of Christianity rather than reflect on the personal and spiritual aspects of faith. Before Christianity was a church, before it was institutionalized as the state religion of the Holy Roman Empire, before it became a political power center in the West and the East, it was a community of faith of people living common lives. It is still for the majority of Christians worldwide a community of faith.

No one is a perfect example of what a Christian or person of faith is. The argument that we are all hypocrites and not perfect representations of what we believe is true. No one is perfect. The fact that the church in all its temporal forms doesn’t match the expectations that people both within and outside the church have for it simply shows that it is a human institution seeking spiritual fulfillment. In fact, people still believe in spite of rationalistic claims against it and political repression which seeks to destroy it. It is simply a testimony to the human character of religion as a phenomenon that as an act of fact transcends time and space as we know it.

Christmas, a Universal Story

Today is Christmas. It has many different cultural expressions. However, at the core of this holiday is the story of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. From the emergence of this child into the world, Christians believed that Jesus was “the incarnation of God in human flesh.” A more modern way to describe this belief is that he was the image of God, a physical representation of God, not a symbolic representation, but a real one.

Paul described Jesus this way.

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and through him.”

The idea that Jesus, born of Mary and Joseph, is the image of God has constantly resonated in my mind as I developed the framework that I call The Spectacle of the Real. Both are image-based realities, one that is based on human flesh, and the other based on digitally simulated images used to create spectacular events. Both are comments on the nature of reality.

If you read the Gospels, you will find stories of Jesus’ interaction with people. For example, in John 4, Jesus is resting under a tree near a well at midday. A woman comes to the well to get water. Jesus knows that typically women come at daybreak when it is cool. He reasons that she is an outcast in her community. She is because she has had serial relationships with men that in today’s terminology might be a common-law marriage. She tries to talk about religion with him. He focuses on her situation. She realizes who he is and her life is changed. We’ve heard this kind of story often. Even in the telling of this story, the ending is often missed. The woman returns to the village where she is a social pariah. She tells of her interaction with this man. The village is moved to come to see who this man is who told everything about herself. As her life was changed, her whole village was changed in their relationship to her. In my terminology, she is now a person of impact.

If you watch religious television, they present a different perspective. They are operating through a Spectacle of the Real scenario. The church has to create a show of sound and light images to appeal to a culture that has been programmed to respond to the Spectacle in order to prove who Jesus is. This presentation is a simulation intended to capture attention. They are living out the Spectacle on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. A Spectacle of the Real event is created as an entry point to transition to a more direct experience of faith.

Simulations can become a simulacra, a virtual reality, a hyper-reality, a replacement reality of the world of meaning. They are a kind of diversion, a deflection from reality that commands our attention. This is the nature of the spectacular event.

The effect, whether it is a church, a politician, a social media platform, or a news organization, is to maintain constant control of our attention. As a result, we are in a constantly distracted state.

The Christmas Story

Since this is Christmas, I want to describe the story of the birth of Jesus. In some respects, it is a story of a spectacular event. But there is no attempt to sustain the spectacle nature of such an event. The claim of this story from the Bible is remarkable if true. It is the story of God who is the transcendent creator of all that exists, taking on human flesh to live among us. If there is a story that is ripe for being turned into the Spectacle of the Real, the story of Jesus is it.

I’m drawing from all four of the Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - who give us different aspects of this story. They are writing to their particular audience. In other words, the context of historical time and geographical and cultural space matter.

The basics of the story are that Joseph and Mary are engaged to be married. An angel comes to Mary to tell her that she will have a child even though she is a virgin. She goes to the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. They confirm the angels message. Mary offers a prayer of praise known as The Magnificat. Near the end of her pregnancy, Joseph and Mary travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Joseph’s hometown, to register with the Roman authorities. They were unable to find a room in an inn, and so they sleep in a barn with some animals. Over night, Mary delivers Jesus.

Angels appear to a group of shepherds. They tell them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you: he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Then a host of angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” As the Angels left, the shepherds left to go see the child.

Even then the word spread quickly. Three Wise Men from the East came to Jerusalem asking, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw a star in the east and have come to worship him.” This report disturbed King Herod and the whole city of Jerusalem. King Herod called the chief priests and teachers of the Temple together and asked, “Where was this child to be born?” They told him, “In Bethlehem.” Herod sends the Wise Men to find Jesus and report back to him. The star that they had seen in the east led them to where Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus were in the barn. They warned them about King Herod’s interest, and presented to them gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh.

After they left, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream. He was told, “Get up. Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I send for you because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” When Herod discovered that they had escaped, he ordered the murder of all boys two years of age and younger. Later they returned to their home in Nazareth.

It is a simple story whose meaning transcends most cultural celebrations of Christmas.

The Spectacle of the Real

Guy Debord’s statement captures an understanding of what I call The Spectacle of the Real.

The Spectacle of the Real is not a direct connection to reality. To learn more about this read the series that I wrote on it last spring. It is important for understanding the world we live in today.

Modern Spectacles are created for us to be passive observers with little connection to direct reality. There is a linear sequence that takes place. A simulated Spectacle is created. It is inviting because it is always “Breaking News.” The power of the Spectacle is that it seduces us into the emotion and drama of the moment. It is a story telling us that our desire for something will be fulfilled by giving it our undivided attention. The problem is that these serial events feeding our desire for meaning and inclusion in the moment is not direct experience. It is a simulated one. As a result, we are led into a religious-like false consciousness. This can happen with a band, a political cause, and even a church. The Spectacle creates a narcotic effect on us. We have to have it to be our true selves. This is how the creators of the simulation control us. We want more of it. Even when the underlying idea, like the love of God, is a good one. Using the Spectacle of the Real method corrupts the goodness of it. To understand really what I mean consider the COVID pandemic as the most sophisticated Spectacle of the Real event ever created.

The Image of God

Now, what would it look like if the Spectacle event was a direct experience with reality? What if this direct experience was with God the creator of the universe who had taken on human flesh? Before the coming of Jesus, there was a Spectacle-like character to the ancient Hebrew religion. There were moments where God met people like Abraham and Moses, but not in the flesh, but in moments of visions and symbolic appearances. The Jewish faith was a genuine belief without a whole lot of evidence. Their story is a remarkable one. It is worth learning how to live without direct assurance.

Jesus is born and immediately he is understood to be the Messiah, the Savior of the Jews. Of course, this creates conflict, but the leaders of the Temple believed that it was their prerogative to make such a declaration. That isn’t what was going on.

In his encounters with people, Jesus showed what God was like. If Debord’s description is correct, and I believe it is, then we can reframe it to describe Jesus’ relationship to the world.

The spectacle of Jesus as the image of God is not a collection of selfies, but a social relation among people, mediated by the literal image of God.

We see here that images can now be understood to operate on a spectrum between reality and hyper-reality. If Jesus was a postmodernist Spectacle creator, we’d have stories of him showboating his magical skills in front of large crowds. This is not what we find in the Gospels. Instead, we find him in direct interaction with individuals and small groups of people. When he is speaking to a crowd, it is as a rabbi, a teacher, not as a wizard. His approach was counter-intuitive. Let’s look at this in the context of his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well.

The Woman at the Well Meets Jesus

Women go to the well to get water.

Peshawar, Pakistan, July 1981.

In the middle of the conversation that Jesus was having with the woman, he first asks her for a drink. The woman is stunned that a Jew would speak to a woman from Samaria. Jews and Samaritans in those times didn’t get along. He responds, “

If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

He is being very subtle here. He is not ramping up the emotion of the moment. Instead, his respect for her brings her closer to trusting him. She still does not understand who he is. He is not the Spectacle of God in the world. He is the living image of God in direct relationship with the people of the world. He then tells her,

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

He treats her with humility and gentleness. Their conversation turns to her relationships with men, and the number of husbands that she has had. There is awareness but not judgment. She tries to steer the conversation back to a discussion about religion. She calls him a prophet. She says,

“I know that the Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.

Jesus then provides perspective for her to understand who he actually is.

“I who speak to you am he.”

This is the image of God seen in Jesus throughout the Gospels. As God’s Son who is the image of God the Father, Jesus as that image mediates a new direct relationship between this woman and God. We know this because of the effect of her testimony to the town’s people who only short-time before treated her as an outcast. Now, she is an agent of reconciliation in their village.

The Spectacle of Christmas

Over the centuries, Christmas became more than a celebration of the birth of the Christ-child. It incorporated recognition of the turn of the winter solstice. It became a time of family gift-giving and end-of-the-year parties. It was a time for businesses to liquidate their inventories before the end of the year. A jolly North Pole resident Santa Claus came to be synonymous with Christmas. Christmas trees and Christmas markets fill the streets of cities all over the world. At Christmas, there is something for everyone. In this way, it is the perfect Spectacle of the Real, blending a kernel of reality surrounding Jesus’ birth with the myriad of customs that became “adopted” by the Christmas Spectacle.

Last night, on Christmas Eve, people all over the world gathered for church services. In many places, young people returning home for family celebrations are reconnecting with old friends and people from their community. Children and parents will listen online as Santa flies his sleigh across the world to deliver gifts to “good little boys and girls.” As I wrote this post, I listened to Handel’s oratorio, Messiah.

Today, people will gather in their homes to celebrate. Gifts will be shared. Stories told. Delicious food and drink will be enjoyed. I suspect after nearly three years of COVID trauma, stories of those who passed away will be remembered. A sober, yet thankful time will be had in homes around the world.

Standing behind the scenes in most of those places is the presence of Jesus, the boy born to be King, Lord, and Savior who came down from heaven to live amongst the people of the world. As John wrote,

“The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and other Son, who came from the Father full of grace and truth. “

The story is not just about a child who is a threat to a King. Or a child who is a symbol of God’s presence in the world. It is the testimony by people of a man born in a barn, who traveled never far from home, who lived, died, and was raised from the dead to bring healing and peace to our world. As Paul writes in Ephesians,

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, … His purpose was to create one new person out of the two, thus making peace, and in his one body to reconcile both of them to God … “

For me, therefore, Christmas is not a Spectacle of the Real. Instead is a time to ponder as modern people the impossibility of a transcendent creator God taking on human flesh and walking among us. This is the meaning of Jesus as an itinerant Jewish rabbi reaching down and healing the man born blind without fanfare. It is Jesus speaking to the tax collector about his responsibility. It is seeing Jesus throughout in his ministry avoiding the crowds because his time had not come. It is seeing Jesus’ forgiveness of his closest friends, his disciples, who abandoned him at his greatest hour of need. It is seeing the image of God dying for humanity.

If this is the image that God would have us see, then it is an image that directs us to the kind of people we can be. As I was told as a child, “you may be the only Jesus that someone meets during their life.” Very true. So, on this day,

May your Christmas bring your families together in peace and understanding.

May you give and receive thanks for the blessings of the past and seek wisdom for the hardships of the present.

May you see what has been hidden in plain sight that fills life with peace, love, and joy.

And, may you find the purpose for your life through the recognition that

“We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”